I went to his business outside Allentown PA a few years ago. At first Sam would only speak to me trough an intercom and behind two locked doors. The first question he asked me was how did I find him and was I a detective. I said no I am not a detective and that his address was on his website. He evently came out and I told him I was doing a bus conversion and was interested in some parts he advertised for sale. He said that he was not able to show me any since he had a customer inside that was going to give him 20 million for a Neoplan he was working on. Maybe I am wrong but it certainly seemed like a pretty shady business.

He probably thought you were the police,or someone he owed money to. Good thing you didn't do any business with him or you would have been conned out of your money.The guy is as smooth as a babies behind,the police told me that his game is hard to prosecute, cause it falls under a civil matter most times. Count your blessings friend.

I spent about 6 hours with him at that place. It was very weird. He talked all of this nonsense about 10+Mil dollar coaches. We even left our bus with him, to fly home. After we got to the hotel, we had that "weird" feeling kick back in. We sent him an email asking him some questions. He emailed back ranting and raving, and finished with "come get your bus, I don't want to work on it anymore." Then he threatened to call the police, and tell them that we had a stolen bus, or something. We picked the bus up again, and were VERY happy that we did.

It was only later that we discovered all of this about him. Dodged a mortar shell there, not just a bullet! We were counting our blessings for sure.

4 Years ago when we were looking for a bus he had one advertized 1980 MCI MC 9 that was used by a group called "Angel Fire" on the side Blue in color. Had a floor, tanks, and a shower in it.He was asking 12,000.00. Said the motor had only about 60,000 miles on it. I e mailed him and asked about it. He said a lot about it but just didn't sound right. He called me 2 weeks later and said He had sold that one but had a better one if I wanted to drive up there to see it and maybe add some things to make it our own. It had tanks but he told me he took them out to put them in another bus but would put new tanks in it before it was done.

I said first I didn't want to drive up there, could he send me some pictures 1st. He said he would but never did. I called back and told him we wanted to do our own work and did he have a shell? He said yes but they were still stretching it out to 45 feet???I told him I didn't want one that big well we have some 40's but we would have to do the work on them. I told him forget it and never called back.

Later found out reading John316's post way back that I made the right decision and bought somewhere else. Man are we glad we did.Thanks again John.

Hey Dave5; that link you posted , has a picture of the bus, that walker was supposed to be working on for me. The bottom right hand corner, with the wheelchair lift. When i went to his shop, to inspect the progress on my build ,that is what i saw, the rest of the bus was stripped clean. Sold for parts i imagine. The other photos are not from his shop, they were taken at other locations, to make it ''appear'' like thats the work being done at his shop. The whole thing is a facade,thats the only way i can describe it.

My wife and I flew out there in 2007. We made a decision before we went that we would buy nothing on site. We would look it over and make a decision later. He had a bus that would work well for us and pressed us on a down payment. He would not start it because he said it needed some work and he would use our down payment to fix the motor and have it ready for us to pick up in a few weeks.

We went outside and sat in the rental car. We ALMOST went back in and wrote a down payment check. But we decided to stick with our original plan.

We did not sleep a wink that night in the motel. We decided his bus was a no go for us and only later learned he was a shyster. Whew! That was too close for us.

DKO

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Home is where you go when there's no place else to go!1995/96 Prevost XL Vantare

DKO; I can almost guarantee you that the motor had a half a million miles on it.It probably wouldn't start thats why he said it had some issues, if you would have given him your down payment, you never would have seen that money again.